Bob made the earliest chance to obtain California John's promised
advice. The old man was unlettered, but his understanding was informed
by a broad and gentle spirit and long experience of varied things. On
this the head ranger himself touched.
"Bob," he began, "I'm an old man, and I've lived through a lot. When I
come into this state the elk and deer and antelope was running out on
the plains like sheep. I mined and prospected up and down these
mountains when nobody knew their names. There's hardly a gold camp you
can call over that I ain't been in on; nor a set of men that had
anything to do with making the state that I ain't tracked up with. Most
of the valley towns wasn't in existence those days, and the rest was
little cattle towns that didn't amount to anything. The railroad took a
week to come from Chicago. There wasn't any railroad up the coast. They
hadn't begun to irrigate much. Where the Redlands and Riverside orange
groves are there was nothing but dry washes and sage-brush desert. It
cost big money to send freight. All that was shipped out of the country
in a season wouldn't make up one shipment these days. I suppose to folks
back East this country looked about as far off as Africa. Even to folks
living in California the country as far back as these mountains looked
like going to China. They got all their lumber from the Coast ranges and
the lower hills. This back here was just wilderness, so far off that
nobody rightly thought of it as United States at all.
"Of course, by and by the country settled up a little more but even then
nobody ever thought of timber. You see, there was no market to amount
to anything out here; and a few little jerk-water mills could supply the
whole layout easy. East, the lumber in Michigan and Wisconsin and
Minnesota never was going to give out. In those days you could hardly
_give_ away land up in this country. The fellow that went in for timber
was looked on as a lunatic. It took a big man with lots of sand to see
it at all."
Bob nodded, his eye kindling with the beginnings of understanding.
"There was a few of them. They saw far enough ahead, and they come in
here and took up some timber. Other folks laughed at them; but I guess
they're doing most of the laughing now. It took nerve, and it took
sense, and it took time, and it took patience." California John
emphasized each point with a pat of his brown, gnarled hand.
"Now those fellows started things for this country. If they hadn't had
the sheer nerve to take up that timber, nobody would have dared do
anything else--not for years anyhow. But just the fact that the
Wolverine Company bought big, and other big men come in--why it give
confidence to the people. The country boomed right ahead. If nobody had
seen the future of the country, she'd have been twenty year behind. Out
West that means a hell of a lot of value, let me tell you!"
"The timber would have belonged to the Government," Bob reminded him.
"I'm a Forest officer," said California John, "and what's more, I was a
Forest officer for a good many years when there was nothin' to it but
kicks. There can't nobody beat me in wishing a lot of good forest land
was under the Service instead of being due to be cut up by lumbermen.
But I've lived too long not to see the point. You can't get benefits
without paying for 'em. The United States of America was big gainers
because these old fellows had the nerve just to come in and buy. It
ain't so much the lumber they saw and put out where it's needed--though
that's a good deal; and it ain't so much the men they bring into the
country and give work to--though that's a lot, too. _It's the confidence
they inspire_, it's the lead they give. That's what counts. All the rest
of these little operators, and workmen, and storekeepers, and
manufacturers wouldn't have found their way out here in twenty years if
the big fellows hadn't led the way. If you should go over and buy ten
thousand acres of land by Table Mountain to-morrow, next year there'd be
a dozen to follow you in and do whatever you'd be doing. And while it's
the big fellow that gives the lead, _it's the little fellow that makes
the wealth of the country!_"
Bob stared at the old man in fascinated surprise. This was a new
California John, this closely reasoning man, with, clear, earnest eyes,
laying down the simple doctrine taught by a long life among men.
"The Government gives alternate sections of land to railroads to bring
them in the country," went on California John. "In my notion all this
timber land in private hands is where it belongs. It's the price the
Government paid for wealth."
"And the Basin----" cried Bob.
"What the hell more confidence does this country need now?" demanded
California John fiercely; "what with its mills and its trolleys, its
vineyards and all its big projects. What right has this man Baker to get
pay for what he ain't done?"
The distinction Bob had sensed, but had not been able to analyze, leaped
at him. The equities hung in equal balance. On one side he saw the
pioneer, pressing forward into an unknown wilderness, breaking a way for
those that could follow, holding aloft a torch to illumine dark places,
taking long and desperate chances, or seeing with almost clairvoyant
power beyond the immediate vision of men; waiting in faith for the
fulfillment of their prophecies. On the other he saw the plunderer,
grasping for a wealth that did not belong to him, through values he had
not made. This fundamental difference could never again, in Bob's mind,
be gainsaid.
Nevertheless though a difference in deeper ethics, it did not extend to
the surface of things by which men live. It explained; but did it
excuse, especially in the eye of abstract ethics? Had not these men
broken the law, and is not the upholding of the law important in its
moral effect on those that follow?
"Just the same," he voiced this thought to California John, "the laws
read then as they do to-day."
"On the books, yes," replied the old man, slowly; "but not in men's
ideas. You got to remember that those fellows held pretty straight by
what the law _says_. They got other men to take up the timber, and then
had it transferred to themselves. That's according to law. A man can do
what he wants with his own. You know."
"But the intention of the law is to give every man a----"
"That's what we go by now," interrupted California John.
"What other way is there to go by?"
"None--now. But in those days that was the settled way to get timber
land. They didn't make any secret of it. They just looked at it as the
process to go through with, like filing a deed, or getting two
witnesses. It was a nuisance, and looked foolish, but if that was the
way to do it, why they'd do it that way. Everybody knew that. Why, if a
man wanted to get enough timber to go to operating on, his lawyer would
explain to him how to do it; any of his friends that was posted would
show him the ropes; and if he'd take the trouble to go to the Land
Office itself, the clerk would say: 'No, Mr. Man, I can't transfer to
you, personally, more'n a hundred and sixty acres, but you can get some
of your friends to take it up for you.'[Footnote: A fact.] Now will you
tell me how Mr. Man could get it any straighter than that?"
Bob was seeing a great light. He nodded.
"They've changed the rules of the game!" said California John
impressively, "and now they want to go back thirty year and hold these
fellows to account for what they did under the old rules. It don't look
to me like it's fair."
He thought a moment.
"I suppose," he remarked reflectively, going off on one of his strange
tangents, and lapsing once more into his customary picturesque speech,
"that these old boys that burned those Salem witches was pretty well
thought of in Salem--deacons in the church, and all such; p'ticular
elect, and held up to the kids for high moral examples? had the plumb
universal approval in those torchlight efforts of theirn?"
"So I believe," said Bob.
"Well," drawled California John, stretching his lank frame, "suppose one
of those old bucks had lived to now--of course, he couldn't, but suppose
he did--and was enjoying himself and being a good citizen. And suppose
some day the sheriff touched him on the shoulder and says: 'Old boy,
we're rounding up all the murderers. I've just got Saleratus Bill for
scragging Franklin. You come along, too. Don't you know that burnin'
witches is murder?'" California John spat with vigour. "Oh, hell!" said
he.
"Now, Baker," he went on, after a moment, "is Saleratus Bill because he
knows he's agin what the people knows is the law; and the other fellows
is old Salem because they lived like they were told to. Even old Salem
would know that he couldn't burn no witches nowadays. These old timers
ain't the ones trying to steal land now, you notice. They're too damn
honest. You don't need to tell me that you believe for one minute when
he took up this Wolverine land, that your father did anything that he,
_or anybody else_, courts included, thought was off-colour."
"My father!" cried Bob.
"Why, yes," said California John, looking at him curiously; "you don't
mean to say you didn't know he is the Wolverine Company!"